500 Miles

We moved into our new house on the eve of New Years Eve.  New house.  New neighborhood.  New friends. New year. New goals.

I have never been much of a New Year's Resolution type girl.  I figure that if we are trying to become better people, it should be year round, right?  But with all the changes in my life at the time, I couldn't help but make some promises to myself.  All along in this process, my goal has been to become more healthy.  My goal was not to lose weight.  It was not to win races or get medals.  It was to feel better.  Plain and simple.  I wanted my life back.  But I spent enough time with myself to realize that without a specific goal in mind, I might not come through for myself.

I have a friend Kim.  She was never a runner either.  In fact, she openly disliked running. Nevertheless, in 2012, she had given herself the goal to run 500 miles.  That's just over 9 miles a week.  That seemed excessive to me, so I lowered my goal to a mere 300 miles, or just under 6 miles a week.  This was a goal that I never spoke out loud.  I am not even sure if I ever wrote it down.  I calculated it out and kept that number in the back of my head.  I ran 13.88 miles in January.  My average pace was about 14 minutes a mile.  I was no where near on schedule for my 300 miles, but that was only because it was so cold that month.  I would have run more miles if it was warmer.

You see where we were again?  Excuses!

I spent much of February in the same place.  I felt that I couldn't do certain things.  I couldn't do hills.  It was too hard on my knees.  I couldn't do long runs because I had to fit my runs in on the mornings that Cru was in school.  But after not seeing a whole lot of improvement, I knew I was going to have to push myself some more.  I started Saturday morning runs.  I was proud of myself the first time I did the 5K distance without walking once.  I was proud of myself when I pushed myself to 4 miles.  And I was content to stay there.  I was NOT going to be one of those people who felt the need to run 10 miles at once.  That was just crazy.  I figured that if I kept up on a couple of mid-week runs and a 3-4 mile run on the weekend, then I would be on schedule for my goal, and doing great (and I would have been doing great.  I want to make it clear that I don't think there is anything wrong with having a regular running schedule that does not require you to push further each week.)  And I was DEFINITELY not one of those crazy people who started running and suddenly thought they were up for a marathon.  Those people are NUTS!

I signed myself up for a 5K in May, and told myself that I would train to run a 5K faster, instead of training to run further.  I would run 500 300 miles.  And that was good enough for me.